Raid on the Sun

by Rodger W. Claire

  When hostilities ceased, he finished school and then, more determined than ever, reapplied to the IAF. The first man he met was the commander of the air force flying school at Hatzerim, Col. David Ivry. Looking up from Nachumi’s military file, Ivry stared at the young tank commander.

  “Why are you here?” he asked.

  “I was stopped by some of your doctors,” Nachumi replied. “But now I’m back.”

  By the time Nachumi finished his story, Ivry had approved him on the spot.

  Five years later he was a twenty-eight-year-old F-4 Phantom pilot stationed in the wilderness of Ophir Air Force Base at Sharm al-Sheikh on the sweltering tip of the southern Sinai Peninsula, when unconfirmed reports came in that Israel was being attacked. Unlike Raz in the north of Israel, Nachumi had no way of knowing that Egypt had already crossed the banks of the Suez, the “canal of shame,” as President Anwar Sadat had called it. But he knew that if a war had begun, Egypt’s first target would be Sharm al-Sheikh, the long-disputed gateway to the Red Sea lying in the V between the Suez and the Strait of Tiran.

  Without orders, Nachumi rounded up his wingman and their weapons officers and sprinted to the runway, firing up the F-4’s GE turbines. Stationed at the front, the planes were already fully armed. Despite orders over the cockpit radio to “delay,” Nachumi and his wingman taxied their Phantoms down the runway and climbed steeply up, away from the base. Seconds later, as the two pilots circled to the west, they saw a squadron of Egyptian MiG-17s and 21s pounding the airfield below.

  Nachumi’s radio crackled. It was Ophir command. “Who is this? Who’s the flight leader?” the base commander demanded.

  “There is no flight leader,” Nachumi replied. “Just the two of us.”

  There was a long silence.

  “You’re it then,” came the reply.

  Nachumi turned and dived, facing off against twelve Egyptian fighters. It was his first combat experience, and he was outnumbered six to one. He fixed the lead MiG on his radar and fired off his first missile. The MiG dived, trying to shake the heatseeking Sparrow. It failed, bursting into flames and plummeting to the desert floor far below, where it blossomed in a puff of smoke like a tiny blue mushroom. Nachumi, pulling up fast, lost an engine. The heavy plane began stalling out as he quickly refired the turbine. It caught and he resumed the attack. His wingman beside him arced left and launched another Sparrow, which dropped and acquired its target, flashing across the sky toward a second MiG-17. It disintegrated in a flash of fire and black smoke. In the end Nachumi shot down four MiGs and his wingman three. As the two Phantom pilots circled above the airfield, the remaining five MiGs turned and headed west back to Egypt.

  Nachumi would later be awarded the OT HAOZ, the IAF’s second-highest award for courage on the field of battle. No one was prouder than his former flying school commander, Brig. Gen. David Ivry.

  Ten minutes after he walked into Ivry’s office in February 1980, Nachumi “volunteered” to lead the second team to Hill.

  By February, the Italian manufacturer SNIA Technit was finishing work on Iraq’s chemical reprocessing unit and its main components—the “hot cells,” shielded labs designed for handling radioactive materials in safety and for separating plutonium from the spent fuel. President Carter had personally asked Italy to reconsider selling Iraq the hot cells at the time the deal was discovered, but the Italians demurred. As a deal sweetener, Iraq had agreed in addition to the hot cells to also purchase four Italian naval frigates—despite the fact that they were powered by U.S.-made General Electric turbines. Italy assured the United States and Israel that they had nothing to worry about: it was sending its own technicians to al-Tuwaitha to guarantee the Iraqis would never use the equipment to separate weapons-grade plutonium from the spent fuel rods. Finally, the Israelis could sleep in peace . . .

  One balmy Mediterranean evening in August, the getaway month for French and Italian workers, a bomb exploded on the front porch of the SNIA director’s tony “villa” apartment in the suburbs just outside Rome, obliterating the front of the building. The director was out of town with the rest of Rome, and so was spared. Simultaneously, two other bombs exploded inside SNIA’s Rome headquarters, causing extensive damage. The director rushed back to the capital to investigate and assess the damage. As with the Seyne-sur-Mer bombing, a group no one had ever heard of claimed responsibility for the blast the next day: the Committee to Safeguard the Islamic Revolution. This time, instead of a phone call to the city newspaper, a message was left for the SNIA director: “We know about your personal collaboration with the enemies of the Islamic revolution. All those who cooperate with our enemies will be our enemies.” Demanding the company quit all business dealings with Iraq, the note went on to warn: “If you don’t do this, we will strike out against you and your family without pity.”

  Hofi had not given up on buying Ivry more time.

  SUNDAY, JUNE 7, 1981

  1501 HOURS: T-MINUS 1:00

  BEERSHEVA AIR FORCE BASE

  The second lieutenant sat just inside the open doorway of the CH-53, the blades of the heavy-duty combat helicopter whirring overhead and kicking up dust from the asphalt. He and his six-man CSAR (combat search-and-rescue) team had sat steaming on the hot tarmac waiting to spin up for more than an hour, inhaling diesel fumes and trying to find a comfortable position in the back of the cramped chopper. His desert fatigues were already sweat-ringed under the arms and around the collar. At 1501 the mission chief appeared out of the operations hut and signaled the “go” sign. The lieutenant pulled his body back into the bird so that his legs cleared the door as the engines revved, the vibrations shuddering the metal frame and rattling his teeth until the chopper lifted off the tarmac and climbed skyward, its nose banking eastward as it gained speed, already crossing the rugged sands of the Negev toward the border. He ran through his orders: CSAR would helo east, maintaining radio silence, to the Jordanian border, then hold position just west of the line, hovering at one hundred feet. There, they would stand ready, awaiting word of downed pilots, the CH-53’s tracking frequencies tuned to the mission pilots’ PRCs. The CSAR team had been given no briefing about the mission or the pilots’ destination. Their orders were simple: in the event of pilot downing, proceed east, violating Jordanian and any and all sovereign airspace as necessary, and effect rescue as quickly as possible, then return to base. All secrecy was maintained. In fact, as far as anyone outside the base was concerned, CSAR had not even been deployed.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE WARRIORS

  I have commanded my dedicated soldiers,

  I have summoned my warriors,

  Eager and bold to carry out my anger.

  —ISAIAH 13:3

  Hagai Katz couldn’t believe his luck. Among the first operational training unit (OTU) group at Hill, he had become a founding member of the IAF’s newest and most modern fighting squadron. Tall, trim, with thick, sandy brown hair, Katz looked like a high school quarterback, but with the intellect of the president of the chess club. Though too proud to have ever admitted it, as a “nugget”—a rookie pilot—stationed at Beersheva in 1973, Katz had looked up to the base’s famed Phantom squadron fliers Iftach Spector, Doobi Yaffe, and Amir Nachumi. Indeed, to the young trainees in Katz’s unit, the veteran Phantom drivers were celebrities. Stuck in “conversion” at the beginning of the Yom Kippur War, training half the time in the French-made Orugan fighter jet and half the time in the more sophisticated U.S. F-4 Phantom, Katz found himself forced to stand on the sidelines like a spectator and watch Spector’s elites fly off to battle Syrian bandits over the Golan while he remained behind. Now, finally, he was in The Club.

  The twelve pilots selected to form the core of Israel’s new F-16 Fighting Falcon squadron began moving their families into the officers’ quarters at Ramat David in the late fall of ’79. The residential area housed some one hundred families. The accommodations were small two-bedroom apartments, each with a living room and a tiny kitchen, located about tw
enty meters apart in neatly landscaped rows about three hundred meters from the base runway, so that the wives would hear the constant roar of their husbands’ planes taking off and landing all day long. As a perk, the pilots, most of whom had families, had day nurses to aid their wives in the care of their children. It was not an uncommon sight to see smartly dressed nannies wheeling a small squadron of tykes down base streets in wooden strollers that looked more than anything like small wooden market baskets—or toy circus cages.

  The squadron’s first assignment was to become expert in the design and mechanics of the F-16’s various systems. Flying tactics, or “switch orientation”—which buttons did what—would come later. Each pilot was assigned one of the plane’s systems to study in detail, to master the theoretical principles behind its design and the mechanics that comprised its operation in order to teach future trainees. The pilots also translated the original General Dynamics specification and operation manuals from English into Hebrew and wrote up the IAF’s own conversion courses to be used in training incoming Israeli F-16 pilots. Yaffe, who moved into quarters just down the road from Katz, was responsible for the engines. Hagai was made both weapons specialist as well as F-16 project manager, responsible for determining the IAF’s requirements for the entire aircraft and then ordering the appropriate design and production modifications from General Dynamics in San Diego.

  The process was complicated by the fact that the first eight F-16s off the production line were Iranian and had been built to the shah’s specifications. Israeli Air Force tactics and combat protocols were significantly more sophisticated than those of the Iranians, and therefore so were the IAF’s operational needs. For one thing, the shah had ordered his planes built to United States Navy specifications. As such, the planes were designed to carry the navy’s standard 1,000-pound ordnance. The IAF on the other hand used only 500-pound or 2,000-pound bombs. Katz had to ensure that the F-16s already on the line were retrofitted with the proper bomb clips and release systems to accommodate Israeli ordnance as well as make sure the necessary design changes were incorporated into production of future Israeli F-16s. The IAF’s F-16s would be outfitted with Israeli-made, air-to-air Sidewinder missiles instead of U.S. Stingers. This change necessitated not only new modified missile clips under the wings but also changes in the plane’s computerized missile logic. Likewise, the Iranian-ordered F-16 communication systems had to be replaced and modified to conform to the IAF’s own secure Com links. There were many such changes throughout the aircraft’s various systems.

  Katz ordered the retrofittings and/or design changes through the GD liaison engineer, now posted to Tel Aviv. Some changes were relatively simple mechanical replacements; others would take months to design, build, and implement, delaying the delivery of the planes. The first two planes off the line would be F-16-003s, two-seaters that would allow OTU pilots to train alongside future conversion fliers. The bulk of the F-16s, however, would be single-pilot fighters. By December 1979, Katz finished his project work overseeing the mechanical conversions and began to think about something other than the insides of the plane. In two months he would ship out with Zeev Raz and the first conversion team to Hill Air Force Base. He was excited about the prospect of flying again. That was what it was all about, after all.

  The first of February 1980, Raz flew ahead to Hill outside Salt Lake City. The rest of the squad, Yaffe, Katz, and a young F-15 fighter pilot named Israel Shafir, followed later in the week, flying a commercial El Al flight from Israel to New York, then transferring for the three-hour connection to Salt Lake City. The pilots were allowed to bring their families with them to Hill for the three-month training course. Yaffe brought along his wife, Michal, and his young son. Both Shafir and Katz brought their wives as well. Raz, intensely focused as leader and commander, rode alone.

  The pilots and their families moved into a small motel in the tiny military town that had grown up outside the base, which was situated in a valley beneath the Rocky Mountains. Raised in the deserts of the Middle East or the flat fertile plains off the Mediterranean, most of the Israelis had never seen anything like the towering, snow-capped peaks that surrounded them. The pilots were awestruck by the majestic backdrop of the white-topped ridges that rose up to encircle them as they descended to the runway below.

  The pilots attended flight school five days a week and had the weekends off. Indeed, the conversion training was more like a nine-to-five job than Hollywood’s Top Gun camp—with the one crucial exception that their workday could well end with their funeral. The pilots were professionals, most far along in their careers. They resembled more a steeled special ops team with a job to do than the clichéd cocky cowboy-pilot. Unlike infantry combat units where men often did form tight friendships or fraternities, single-seat fighter pilots were loners. The feeling was more or less that you were on your own. You did the flying alone; you made the crucial decisions alone; if you were hit, you died alone. The camaraderie between fighting men expressed itself in joking or good-natured hazing. Feelings, fears, even missions were never discussed.

  But despite this natural proclivity for solitude, the men and their families, working and living together so closely, especially so far from home in a wholly alien environment, formed a close-knit community, a little Israel of the Rockies. Though not overly religious, the men and their wives felt it important to keep up family traditions and the culture of their homeland. So every Friday evening all of the families, including Raz, would gather at the motel home of one of pilots and celebrate the Sabbath, lighting the candles, singing folk songs, and sharing favorite dishes. Yaffe, wisecracking, easygoing, even irreverent, kept everyone loose. Shafir, a superb musician, played guitar and led the songs.

  Known to everyone as “Relik” or “the Major,” Israel Shafir was the unofficial squadron philosopher. Dark-haired, with intense brown eyes and classic Roman looks, he was educated, urbane, well spoken. He liked to read historical novels and write poetry, though he didn’t like anyone to know that. Shafir had lived and gone to school in Canada and Scotland, spoke perfect English, and evinced a devilish, self-deprecating humor, routinely addressing everyone in mock aristocratic accent as “Doctor.” If asked a question by one of the OTU instructors, Shafir typically answered playfully à la Cary Grant, “Yes, Doctor?” or, when walking across the tarmac, would call out in greeting, “How are you today, Doctor?” When he finished with flying, he planned to return to university for a doctorate in philosophy.

  Some nights the Israelis would join their Yank instructors at the local base bar for a round of beers, some good-natured nationalist boasting, and even a song or two. On weekends the Israelis turned out like tourists, traveling to national parks Bryce Canyon and Zion. In an “only in America” moment, they caught the local tour of a demolition derby, watching crazy Yanks smashing perfectly good cars into one another. Later, during training for the third group, the pilots and their families were shuttled to Park City’s famed ski resort. Dressed in T-shirts and Levi’s that were standard wear in the Middle East, the Israelis were stunned to discover a picture postcard forest of snow packed ten feet deep. Bare-armed and freezing, they were like kids and spent the day hiking the drifts and challenging the instructors to snowball fights.

  But mostly the pilots were excited about flying the new machines, the F-16s. Raz’s group in March eagerly awaited delivery of Israel’s first four aircraft to Hill—the two two-seaters and two single-seaters. Finally the day came when the four aircraft, painted virgin military gray, without wing and tail insignia, sat quietly, regally, on the tarmac before the Hill hangars. Later the planes would be emblazoned with the familiar blue circle and Star of David of the Israeli Air Force, but for now, for the pilots, the planes on the runway, sparkling in the early morning sunlight, were tangible symbols of their nation’s strength. They were inexplicably proud. And excited as children at Christmas—or, at least, Hanukkah. The planes would ultimately be flown to Israel, but for now they were the aircraft Raz and his pil
ots would fly during training. No longer would they need to borrow the USAF F-16s for conversion exercises.

  Yaffe had studied the design and mechanics of the plane for months, but even so, the first time he climbed into the cockpit of the multimillion-dollar, state-of-the-art fighter, he was nearly overwhelmed. The sensation of sitting high in the glass-canopied cockpit, tilted at a 30-degree angle and raised above the lines of the fuselage with nothing but blue sky surrounding him, was stunning. The powerful Pratt & Whitney engine, responding to the lightest touch of the computerized control stick, would literally blast him forward, pinning Yaffe to his seat like a race car driver coming out of the pits. For Yaffe, in fact, it was like being in a brand-new Porsche.

  Training under command of the 16th Tactical Fighter Training Squadron was a mix of classroom, tactical flying, debriefing, and instruction that allowed the pilots to grow accustomed to the new aircraft. The course was designed to evolve through a graduated series of training flights and instruction, including intensive training in BFMs, basic flying maneuvers, emphasizing one-on-one dogfights between the pilot and an OT (operational training) instructor; ACMs, air combat maneuvers, learning combat tactics with two bandits against one “good” guy; and ACTs, air combat tactics, concentrating on defensive and offensive maneuvers against a group of bandits. The pilots also flew training exercises in SA, surface attack bombing, and SAT, or surface attack tactics, learning how to use the F-16s’ sophisticated defenses to avoid enemy antiaircraft fire and SAMs while in final approach and targeting—the two most vulnerable stages of a bombing run. Each course began with classroom instruction conducted by lead instructor Gary Michaels and a specialist OTU, then actual flying, each IAF pilot teamed with a personal instructor.